The graphs below represent a performance comparison
between different Disk Cache settings. Disk Cache is set in
the Memory control panel. Testing was done using MacBench
5.0 on a PowerBook G3/266 with 128MB of RAM and OS version
8.6 installed. MacBench profiles popular software programs
such as Adobe Photoshop, Word 6.0 and QuarkXpress among a
variety of others and applies these profiles to the various
subsystems being tested. Click
Here for more information on MacBench

Note: MacBench probably makes greater use of
the disk cache than most most applications. These results
therefore in all likelihood give an accurate assessment of
the benefits of the disk cache but also an exaggerated one
in as far as general computer use is concerned. It would appear
from these scores that there is little benefit from setting
the disk cache above 1MB and diminishing returns above 512K.
I would treat these results as indicative rather than definitive.
MacSpeedZone welcomes your comments
on these results.

Stopwatch Tests

The results below measure the percentage of
time taken to relaunch the specified application. During a
relaunch certain information is taken from the Disk Cache
rather from the drive thus speeding performance. Results represent
the performance improvement over a base 128K Disk Cache which
receives 100%. Shorter bars equal better performance.

The following two tests used a 60MB folder
containing over 1,100 items